Processing Bad News

I guess now that the initial shock has passed, I find myself just irritated. How could we put back supposedly good looking embryos that were already hatched and NOTHING happen? I was supposed to trust the lab to make the call on when to transfer them back, and what I wanted didn't matter, and NOTHING happened. I tried to look on my clinic's website to see if they post their IVF results by day of transfer and they don't. That said, I can't imagine that they would continue to do day 6 transfers if they didn't have a decent success rate.

Archie said he wishes he had stopped me from drinking the iced tea I had the night of our anniversary. ICED TEA!! I didn't even realize I had iced tea until I sat straight up in bed that night thinking, "Holy CRAP, I cannot believe I did that!" I told Archie that if I can have a baby at work whose mother did PCP, heroin and cocaine and can still get pregnant, two glasses of caffeine was not the deal breaker.

I just got off the phone with my doc. He said the only way our cycle could have been more perfect was if we had gotten pregnant. He said that it was a great cycle, and if we did another fresh one, he wouldn't change anything. He said we couldn't have elected to do a day 5 transfer because the embryos weren't ready. I asked about our frozen blasts, what they looked like and their quality. We froze 2 hatching blasts, and 2 expanding blasts which are evidently further along than early blasts but not at the hatching stage. 1 of our embryos was good quality, the other 3 were fair. This doesn't worry me much as our first cycle was all fair embryos and we got pregnant with Jack.

I asked Dr. M what to expect for a FET since we've never done anything but fresh cycles, and he said that they do injectable estrogen which is IM, but it's only given every 3 days. They sometimes do lupron, sometimes do BCP's, and they do injectable progesterone IM but that won't start until a few days before the transfer. I asked about thawing the embryos, how far in advance they do it and they thaw them the day of the transfer. I told him we'd want to put two back, and he said that they would start by thawing two, and if both survived thawing then we'd still have two frozen but if they didn't both survive they would continue thawing until we had two embryos to transfer or until we ran out. So it's not a guarantee that anything would even be transferred back. I'm just glad we decided to freeze some since this cycle didn't work out, at least I don't have to deal with the fact that "we're done".

My mom is upset. She asked if I was really going to put myself through this again emotionally. Yup, I am. I can't believe that I've dealt with this blow as well as I have, but I think it's because we're not "done". We still have a chance. If insurance won't cover it, we'll wait until we get our taxes back next year instead of taking Jack to Disney. If it will cover it, than we'll do it, and use our taxes to take Jack to Disney next year.

Archie is just as disappointed and confused as I am. And of course, Jack went to all these appointments with me and knew that the bloodwork today was to see if there were any babies growing in my tummy. So when we picked him up from school, and I was upset, he wanted to know why. I was on the phone with my mom and she was upset that I told him how I did, but he needs to know. He knew that we had put babies back in there, the logical question is what happened to them? So he asked and I told him that I was upset because there weren't any babies in my tummy and that meant that we had more time for us to have him all to himself. He was fine with that and gave me hugs and kisses. Then a little later he asked me where the babies went. I explained that they went to heaven because God was ready for them. He asked how they got there, and I told him that it was like God gave them a big hug and just wrapped them up in His arms. He asked me if it was like a sliding star that slid up to heaven from earth, and I said sure. However he can understand it and process it is fine with me. So, Archie told me that when they went over to Jack's best friend's house, A's mom asked how I was doing. Jack said, "My mommy's babies died and they went to heaven." like it was no big deal, and I'm glad that for him it's not. I guess we handled it the right way or he'd be more upset, right? I don't know. There certainly isn't a parenting book that tells you how to deal with this.

Day 9 IVF

They measured 8 follicles at my ultrasound today, 5 on my right, 3 on my left. They were between 12-15mm. They said they would probably see me in two days, so Monday, which means no retrieval on Tuesday. I got a call from my nurse, my estradiol was 1024 this morning. Nice jump I thought! They are dropping my follistim dose to 100. This has me slightly concerned since my follicles were only 11-13mm two days ago, they haven't grown that much, and now they're dropping my dose.

I have a dilemna. I'm not sure if I ever posted my worst Mommy moment on here, so here it is. At the beginning of the school year, our church had a "Blessing of the Backpacks." I was definitely taking Jack, but they never made mention of bringing your backpack, so I wasn't sure if it was like a metaphorical thing where they were going to just do a generalized blessing of the school year and the students or what. I should have brought his backpack, but I didn't. I thought about putting it in the car "just in case" but I didn't. So they called all the kids up to the altar with their backpacks. Jack ran up there just as happy as can be until he realized all the other kids had their big kid backpacks, except him. He looked at us in the pew to ask where his was. I felt like the biggest loser ever when he dropped his head and started to cry up there. I still get tears in my eyes thinking about how disappointed he was.

So the dilemna comes in here. Tuesday would have been a great day for ER. If I go in Monday and they say take your trigger shot tonight, ER will be 36 hours after that shot-Wednesday. Wednesday is Parent Day at school. We will both be required to be at the ER. I talked to the nurse today when she called and asked what time the clinic starts their ER's. She said 9am. This MAY just work out for us. Parent's Day starts with chapel at 8:45, and then you go to your child's classroom with them until 10am at which point they have refreshments for the parents in the fellowship hall. We could book out of there at 10am if there was any way we could be one of the last ones getting their ER that day, say 11am?!?!?!

I'm really stressed out over this. These are two very important things. There is NO WAY I want to let our son down again and have him be the only kid at Parent's Day without a parent there. We could not take him to school that day, but he is still going to know it's going on because they've been talking it up to the kids, making invitations for the parents, etc. Then if I take him out of school I have to figure out where he's going to go that day because he can't go with us. I obviously can't miss my ER. So much for my acupuncture helping with my anxiety and stress right now. It's through the roof until I know what's going on Monday and will have the info I need to be able to make some decisions.

Please pray that our follicles grow, but just enough that perhaps my ER will be Thursday instead so that we can participate in our son's day at school. Please pray that if ER is on Wednesday that they can schedule us for later in the day so that we can avoid having to make a decision that may really upset our son. Please pray for some sense of peace for me during this next 48 hours of waiting.